Should sisters be doing it for themselves? Against the housewifisation of women’s entrepreneurship

Summary

In this article, we evaluate the gendered implications of the expansion of part-time self-employment (PTSE) for women who use this option as a form of flexible working. Using panel data from the UK Household Longitudinal Survey, we confirm that unsurprisingly, women dominate PTSE, given it enables them to combine household work and income generation. However, we also find that PTSE incurs a significant penalty compared to the incomes of both men and women in full-time self-employment or waged work. Relatedly, in households with women in PTSE, there is also a greater dependency upon state welfare benefits to supplement low incomes. Theoretically, we contribute to current debates by conceptualising this evidence as the ‘housewifization’ of PTSE: a feminised form of work afforded low visibility, value and status leading to greater precarity and poverty, the detriment of which is camouflaged by the socio-cultural positivity attributed to entrepreneurship in the contemporary era.